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Vladimir Soloviev on Nationalism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2009

Michael Karpovich
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Extract

The name of Vladimir Soloviev, insofar as it is familiar to the Western world, is known as that of a philosopher and religious thinker. This was, of course, the field in which he was particularly prominent. Russia can boast only a few formal philosophers (as distinguished from philosophizing novelists, poets or historians), and among those Soloviev is probably the most outstanding. Moreover, in the history of modern Russian religious thought, he occupies a central position, serving as a connecting link between the mid-nineteenth century Slavophils and such contemporary writers as Berdiaev and Bulgakov.

But Soloviev's was a versatile and many-sided nature, and many other aspects of his life and activity deserve attention and study. He wrote interpretive essays on Russian poetry, some of which were landmarks in Russian literary criticism, and he was a poet himself—not a great poet, perhaps, but one with a strongly marked individual character.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 8 , Issue 2 , April 1946 , pp. 183 - 191
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 1946

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References

1 The following general works on Soloviev are available in Western languages: d'Herbigny, Michel, Un Newman russe: Vladimir Soloviev (Paris, 1911);Google ScholarSacke, Georg, W. S. Solomjews Geschichisphilosophie (Berlin, 1929);Google ScholarStrémooukhoff, D., Vladimir Soloviev et son oeuvre messianique (Paris, 1935);Google ScholarZernov, Nicholas, Three Russian Prophets: Khomiakov, Dostoevsky, Soloviev (London, 1944);Google ScholarZouboff, Peter P., Vladimir Solovyev on Godmanhood (New York, 1944).Google Scholar None of these deals specifically with the subject of the present article.

2 Opravdanie dobra (1897). Reprinted in volume VIII of the second edition of Soloviev's collected works (Sobranie sochinenii (St. Petersburg, 1911.Google Scholar) English translation by Duddington, N. A.: The Justification of the Good (New York. 1918).Google Scholar

3 A good discussion of the latter can be found in Georg Sacke's book cited above.

4 Soloviev anticipates here by half a century the conclusions of some modern scholars such as Carlton J. H. Hayes.

5 See his article “The Three Forces” (“Trlsily”) published in 1877.Google Scholar

6 It also was the time of his close friendship with Dostoevsky who undoubtedly exercised a strong influence upon him. The death of Dostoevsky early in 1881 probably hastened Soloviev's emancipation from Slavophilism.

7 Natsionalnyi vopros v Rossii, 2 vol., (1884 and 1891).Google Scholar Reprinted in vol. V of the second edition of Soloviev's collected works.

8 To Soloviev's indignation, one of these nationalist writers came out with a glowing apology for Ivan the Terrible—a curious parallel to the rehabilitation of that sovereign in the present-day Soviet historiography.